House crashes in Port Loyola

With substandard streets, drainage, electricity and water service, it’s a part of Belize City that has not always been blessed with luck. And that unfortunate trend continued for one Port Loyola family, who has seen their modest home transformed from a two story to a bungalow. Patrick Jones reports.

Patrick Jones Reporting

The three-bedroom house has been standing at number 888 Jane Usher Boulevard for the last six years. On Sunday morning, Francisca Nunez says she watched as the structure she called home, buckled as its supporting posts gave way.

Francisca Nunez

?I was about to go in but I was finishing hanging my clothes, so I ended up with the skirt in my hands because, I suddenly hear the big noise. I was like, what?s happening. It was the house going down. It was sudden and unexplainable but I think it?s maybe because of the water when the rain and then the yard get full up.?

No one was injured in the incident, as the owner, Rosaria Nunez, was at church and her common law husband was attending a funeral in Punta Gorda. In the meantime the family has been relying on the assistance of relatives and friends to get them through this difficult time.

Francisca Nunez

?Last night I went to sleep at my sister?s house. And then my mother contacted her church pastor from Centro Evangelistico. And then she is helping us out. She already bought some blocks and some wood. And she brings about fifteen brothers from church to help us bring it up again.?

While members of her church have come to the rescue with material and manpower to restore the house to its upright position, Nunez says the family had been planning to do some repairs.

Francisca Nunez

?Actually my mother had been noticing and she said she see the house bending. The night before she said she was hearing some noise like it was breaking. But it wasn?t something that she was expecting to happen, because she was going to fix it but it happened before.?

While the workmen prepare to physically put the house back in order, Nunez says the family knows that they will eventually have to relocate permanently as the building stands on land now owned by the privatized Port of Belize Limited. Patrick Jones, for News 5.

Late word this evening is that efforts to jack up the building commenced today and will hopefully be completed tomorrow.